Text used – 2 Kings 5:1-14

• What an utterly perfect topic for our annual meeting day! I didn’t plan this, y’all, I promise. I had this sermon series laid out long before the Session chose the date for our annual meeting. And yet here we are – in the midst of the ordinary business of the church and the extraordinary act of worship – thinking and talking about creating the extraordinary in the ordinary.
  • Perfect because of how we nestle our annual mtg. in the midst of worship itself
    • Not done this way everywhere (not the way I grew up → memories of sitting on the pew outside the sanctuary listening to the meeting with Myra Mitchell)
    • Meeting + worship meshed together = great because it reminds us that, as the church, all of our actions – from worship and mission to procedural votes and budgets – should be done for the glory of God
  • It’s also a particularly perfect topic for this congregation because of the elements that we’ve added to worship over the past year and a half have been mostly aimed at this – helping us recognize the extraordinary sparks of God out in the ordinary moments of our lives and using this sacred time and space to bring those ordinary and extraordinary moments together.
    • Glimpses of God time is all about sharing those ordinary-to-extraordinary moments … Or, as a doctoral dissertation with which I am intimately familiar puts it, this Glimpses of God practice “is intended to be a conduit through which the love and work of God in Christ Jesus can move through people’s life experiences into the worship of the church.”[1]
  • You see, so often we look at the ordinary parts of our lives and think, “How normal … how mundane … how boring.” And we expect God to work in flashy, extraordinary, knock-your-socks-off kinds of ways because the Bible is full of tales of burning bushes that aren’t consumed and parted seas and water becoming wine and people risen from the dead! Indeed, our God is a miraculous, incredible God who can do things we can’t even begin to imagine. But in the Bible, we also find out that God is a God who works through completely normal things: normal relationships, normal circumstances, normal people. And sometimes, it’s God work through normality – through ordinary, everyday moments and lives – that surprises us the most.
    • Today’s Scripture = quintessential e.g. of that work → And I love this story the most because not only does God work extraordinary healing through a completely normal act, but the extraordinary in that ordinary is blatantly pointed out, not by anyone in power, not by anyone of prestige … but by a group of unnamed servants.
• Today’s Scripture = story of Naaman
  • Description from the beginning of our passage – Naaman was “a general for the king of Aram, … a great man and highly regarded by his master, because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram.”[2]
    • Aram = roughly Syria
    • Important to point out: “through him the Lord had given victory to Aram” doesn’t mean Naaman or the rest of the Aramean army was devoted to God – scholar calls this “a standard way in Israelite writings of explaining the defeat of Israel as God’s people”[3]
    • Also told that Naaman had a skin disease
      • Heb. = as general as that: “skin eruption” or “skin disease”
      • Most translations: “leprosy” → Because while today we know that leprosy is a particular disease, in the ancient world, the term “leprosy” was used to describe a wide array of skin diseases.
      • Whatever this disease is, we know that it’s bad enough that Naaman seeks permission from the king of Aram himself to travel abroad – to Samaria and the home of the prophet Elisha – and seek out healing.
  • Interesting interaction in the middle of this story – speaks of the anxiety and drama of political life
    • As he gives his okay to Naaman to travel to Samaria, king of Aram also off-handedly states, “I will send a letter to Israel’s king.”[4] → Presumably, since Aram had recently conquered Israel, the king of Aram was sending this letter as reassurance that his most powerful general was coming into the territory, not to wage further war or execute any military actions, but to seek out healing.
      • Could have been more troublesome/manipulative than that – some wording of the letter is relayed in our text: [The letter] read, “Along with this letter I’m sending you my servant Naaman so you can cure him of his skin disease.”[5]
    • And what is the response of the king of Israel? – text: When the king of Israel read the letter, he ripped his clothes. He said, “What? Am I God to hand out death and life? But this king writes me, asking me to cure someone of his skin disease! You must realize that he wants to start a fight with me.”[6] → We don’t know whether this was an overreaction or an appropriately-alarmed response. I think it’s safe to say, though, that either ways, it’s a response riddled with anxiety and fear … fear of the Other Side and what they might be planning to do to me. Hmmm … some things never change, eh?
  • Prophet Elisha hears of the king’s response → instructs the king to send Naaman to him
  • Naaman appears at Elisha’s house → But Elisha himself doesn’t even see Naaman. He sees Naaman arrive, and instead of going out to greet him as hospitality customs of the day would dictate, Elisha sends out a servant to speak to Naaman.
    • Servant relays Elisha’s instruction that Naaman should wash in the Jordan River 7 times
  • But this isn’t good enough for Naaman. This isn’t grand enough. This isn’t flashy enough. This isn’t miraculous enough. – text: But Naaman went away in anger. He said, “I thought for sure that he’d come out, stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the bad spot, and cure the skin disease. Aren’t the rivers in Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all Israel’s waters? Couldn’t I was in them and get clean?” So he turned away and proceeded to leave in anger.[7] → Big old adult hissy fit here, folx. Not only is Naaman clearly offended that he didn’t even get an audience with the famous prophet, he’s been asked to wash in the presumably sub-par waters of the Jordan River … and Israelite river that clearly can’t be as good as the rivers in Syria.
    • Nationalism at its worst → presumptions that everything in my homeland is better than anything anywhere else simple because it is my homeland → Thanks for the example, Naaman.
  • And here’s where the best part comes in … Naaman’s sound rebuke by his own, unnamed servants. – text: “Our father, if the prophet had told you to do something difficult, wouldn’t you have done it? All he said to you was, ‘Wash and become clean.’”[8] → Boom. “What, Naaman? This is too easy for you? Don’t be ridiculous. You would have done something crazy hard if Elisha had demanded it without even batting an eye. But he tells you to do something easy, so it must be rigged? It must be useless? It must be a joke? Nah. Refusing healing because it’s ‘too easy’ … that’s the joke.”
    • Words clearly had an impact because Naaman shut up, did as Elisha had instructed, and was made clean
• Truly, friends, Naaman’s story is the ultimate example of getting so caught up in our expectations for God that we fail to actually see God working. We expect the flash and the bang, the pomp and the circumstance, the grandiose and miraculous. And yes, God is there working in those moments – those incredible stories that take our breath away for the extraordinary-ness of them. But we cannot be so blinded by our expectation of the extraordinary that we neglect to see God in those ordinary, everyday moments, too. Because if we truly believe that God is big enough and powerful enough and miraculous enough to work extraordinary moments, how can we not also believe that God can also be at work in our smaller moments, our weaker moments, our mediocre moments?
  • Tuhina Verma Rasche: God is immense and expansive and cannot be defined and contained in mere words. Yet God knows us enough and so yearns to be in a relationship with us that God finds ways in daily and ordinary life to be present with us. … God comes to meet us in the most common and ordinary of elements to redefine and recreate our relationship with God and one another. We were created anew when the extraordinary came to meet us in the most ordinary of elements and experiences.[9] → Today, we get to spent time with one another in some ordinary and some extraordinary moments, and we get to work together to seek out God in all of them. Thanks be to God. Amen.

[1] A quotation from my own doctoral dissertation: “Holy Word, Wholly Engaged: Reconnecting With God and One Another in the Context of Worship,” p. 80.

[2] 2 Kgs 5:1.

[3] Choon-Leong Seow. “The First and Second Books of Kings: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary series, vol. 3. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999), 193.

[4] 2 Kgs 5:5b.

[5] 2 Kgs 5:6b.

[6] 2 Kgs 5:7.

[7] 2 Kgs 5:11-12

[8] 2 Kgs 5:13.

[9] Tuhina Verma Rasche. “Epiphany Series: Created Anew” in A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series: Thematic Plans for Years A, B, and C, vol. 2. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2019), 96.